Motivated to lose weight?
Beliefs could be a factor in weight loss success
Dr. Jeni Burnette is examining the way people’s beliefs affect their ability to lose weight.
BY JOAN TUPPONCE
If people believe that weight is linked to genetics, then are they more likely to feel helpless when it comes to losing weight? That’s one of the questions that Dr. Jeni Burnette, Trawick Post Doctoral Fellow in Richmond’s Department of Psychology, hopes to answer.
As part of her research, Burnette is studying how people’s beliefs affect their motivation to lose weight. She is using the implicit theoretical framework approach in her research that Prof. Carol Dweck of Stanford University first used to study intelligence. Dweck’s approach looks at two mindsets—fixed and growth—that help shape self-concept.
Dweck looked at the reasons why some adolescents do well in middle school and some do not. She found that children with a fixed mindset would often say “I can’t do this” when faced with a setback.
“When they face negative feedback they don’t cope effectively,” Burnette explains. In contrast, according to Burnette, people who have a growth mindset look for ways to overcome failure. They see failure as an indication that their strategy isn’t right. People with a fixed mindset see failure as their lack of ability. They give up quickly and are less likely to persist in a task than people with a growth mindset.
“People with a fixed mindset have a performance-oriented goal,” Burnette says. “It’s strictly about the grade, for example. People with a growth mindset have a learning-oriented goal.” These goals help orient individuals with growth mindset toward master-oriented coping.
Burnette began researching weight management two years ago after hearing Dweck speak. “I wanted to take that approach into the weight domain to see if people had similar patterns to the research she had done on intelligence,” Burnette says. “I believe there are parallels and important implications.”
The question “Why do people struggle to maintain weight loss?” is relevant to today’s society, considering that 85 percent of Americans view obesity as an epidemic, according to a new survey in the 2007 obesity report from the Trust for America’s Health.
“The first year they may lose 10 percent of their weight, but after five years they may be back to the status quo,” Burnette says. “Interventions are effective for the first year, but these folks find it hard to maintain their weight loss.”
Burnette points to articles by The New York Times writer, Gina Kolata, that stress the genetic component of weight management.
“I’m more interested in the social-psychological side of things,” Burnette says. “I’m interested in beliefs about the malleability of body weight and how that affects motivation.”
Senior Kait Metz recently began working with Burnette on the project. “The most exciting part of the research is analyzing and interpreting the results,” she says. “This research will help others by adding to the amount of information known about obesity and how to prevent it. It may contribute to different strategies that people could use to better manage their weight based on their view of weight management.”
Burnette has completed two studies related to fixed- and growth-mindset weight management. In the first, her dissertation at VCU conducted under Don Forsyth, now professor of leadership studies at Richmond, she found students with a growth mindset were more optimistic after a setback and believed that weight was something that could be changed.
“After facing a hypothetical dieting setback, we found that their beliefs affected their optimistic expectations and their intentions to increase their efforts,” she explained. “Students with a fixed mindset felt helpless and inadequate.”
In the second study, Burnette presented students with two fabricated articles—one with the fixed message that you can’t do much to change your weight because of the genetic factor and another highlighting growth mindset research suggesting that body weight is changeable. She told the students the articles were scientific and then presented them with the same hypothetical setback as students in the first study. At the end of the experiment, students were thoroughly debriefed about the nature of the articles and given information on weight management.
Burnette was excited about the findings. “Participants who received the two-page fixed article relative to the participants who received the two-page growth-oriented article, reported significantly less optimism, more helplessness and less desire to increase
their efforts on future diets,” she says.
Jenna Sorge, ’08, has been working with Burnette as a research assistant for three years. “Jeni is enthusiastic about the research. She is always there to help and patiently answers all my questions,” says Sorge.
She found Burnette’s research so fascinating that she framed her senior thesis around it. “[In my thesis] I am going to investigate implicit theories of weight management and personality as it relates to the prejudice against obese individuals,” she explains.
Even though preliminary results of Burnette’s research are promising, she isn’t ready to make global statements about her work. “I am now looking at behavioral outcomes like actual weight change,” she says.
Burnette is in the process of submitting a grant proposal to the National Institutes of Health that would help her explore the role of an implicit theory intervention in helping combat childhood obesity.
“Beliefs have a significant effect on motivation,” she says. “Now we have to look at how shaping beliefs can help people reach their weight loss goals.”